@FootynewsThe Ballon d'Or has a Bundesliga-sized gap in its winners list, and it stretches all the way back to 1996. That year the award went to Matthias Sammer, a defender, which makes him only the second player in that position to ever take it, after Franz Beckenbauer. His case that year was built on the European Championship, the Bundesliga and the German Super Cup all landing in the same stretch. So the bar for a Bundesliga winner was set by a defender cleaning up everything in sight. Thirty years on, another Bundesliga footballer could actually win the most prestigious individual award in football, and the question is whether a new German winner emerges. Considering what it took the last time, that's a stat worth sitting with. #MatthiasSammer #FranzBeckenbauer

@FootynewsThe Ballon d'Or has a Bundesliga-sized gap in its winners list, and it stretches all the way back to 1996. That year the award went to Matthias Sammer, a defender, which makes him only the second player in that position to ever take it, after Franz Beckenbauer. His case that year was built on the European Championship, the Bundesliga and the German Super Cup all landing in the same stretch. So the bar for a Bundesliga winner was set by a defender cleaning up everything in sight. Thirty years on, another Bundesliga footballer could actually win the most prestigious individual award in football, and the question is whether a new German winner emerges. Considering what it took the last time, that's a stat worth sitting with. #MatthiasSammer #FranzBeckenbauer